A Farewell to the many Arms of Vishnu

Sunday, April 23, 2006

bubbles and weddings

All though it steadily rained all day yesterday, the acid rain indigenous to New Jersey could not corrode the excitement of bubble's wedding in New Rochelle. I woke up at the tender hour of 8:30 am having fallen asleep friday night at 11. This was partly due to the hellish day I had in south jersey going to Fort Monmouth for work and the 2 and half hour commute back home which included waiting 45 minutes at a rest stop gas station so that I could pay 3 bucks a gallon to wait in holland tunnel traffic for an hour. Again- that was partly it. I had gotten Capote from netflix a month ago and decided to watch it before i went out. Bad idea because Philip Seymour Huffman (or whatever his cracker name is) was as exciting as a high-pitched, chain-smoking, lisping homesexual. So after waking up at 8:30 I got it in my head that I needed to learn to tie a tie. I usually have random people help me out if the occasion calls for a tie including mel who learned how to tie one in band camp. Fast forward 3 and half hours later with the help of my roomates the moral support of friends over IM, I tied the full windsor in 30 seconds flat! The cost- hours of agony and 2 destroyed ties. Unfortunately at the end of this auspicious event, my phone rings. Mike and I were on call that saturday due to the fact that a high-profile client was doing an upgrade. And since I was the consultant that did the original implementation and mike was the on call support engineer, we were both tasked with the job of helping out the woman at the company if any issues arose as a result of the upgrade. Since the genesis of murphy's law was begot by our product, my phone did ring at noon with a frantic , vodka-soaked voice at the other hand. Long story short mike and I worked with her for 3 hours while she fumbled around rudimentary tasks such as opening a file in notepad and cutting and pasting text. Since time was counting down and I wasn't even dressed, I had mike call backup since our limo was coming at 4 and it was currently 3:30. We piled into the limo shortly after 4 and blasted emails to hand off the shitstorm of an upgrade and left our troubles behind. Once arriving at the Fountainhead, we slammed some champagne and settled down to watch the ceremony. After people watching for a few minutes it was apparent that we had been transported to LA since everyone was beautiful as could be. However I did spot one asian kid so my mind was put at ease. Well from cocktail hour on I can assure you that we had a great time soaking in hennesy and the various ingredients that are intrinisic to the wedding recipe of slow dancing to songs when its obvious that my feet are magnetically attracted to my date's pedicured toes (sorry meg lol) and posing for eyes-half-closed pics with random people you just met. The peacock was out in full effect and I'll admit my neck is a bit sore from the furious strutting that was displayed on the dance floor. Our old friend jager made an appearance and I watched meg down a wine glass full of it down- good work! My boss was bent on doing shots all nite, a ritual I found myself immmersed in more times than I care to count. The speech by Leah's dad was the best wedding speech I've heard in english in awhile. He came around and introduced himself and I managed to slur a few words of thanks and introduce him to my date.The time flew and before we knew it we were relegated to the outside awning in hurricane katrina-esque conditions. Our shady russian limo company was living up to its reputation of being .....well shady. After waiting over an hour we managed to finally get a taxi to come and drive us all the way back to hoboken. Thanks derrick!

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

driving in india

The last 2 times I came back from India I took many pictures of street-level traffic. However it's hard to convey the extreme level of chaos and utter disregard for human life that floods the streets of India everday. Until now.

Courtesy of Youtube!

There is a saying in India: If you want proof that god exists, drive around the streets of India"I can't even count how many times I thought I was a dead man while being paradeded around the rickety streets swerving around cows, camels, chickens, dogs, beggars, tractors-Let me rant about tractors for a second. What business does a tractor whose top speed is 5 mph have on a highway? Especially a tractor hauling 1000000 tons of shit!

The cars themselves are even worse than hyundais. No air bags, no crumple panels - no one even has side view mirrors!! To top that of , at nite everyone drives with their high beams on thus rendering the gift of sight completely useless. That being said I can't wait to go back :)